There’s a Dark
Side to Meditation That No One Talks About
Meditation can bring about a wide
variety of thoughts and emotions—some are peaceful, others are not.
Quartz
The calm before the panic
attack.
We’ve all heard about the benefits of
meditation ad nauseam.
Those disciplined enough to practice regularly are rewarded with increased
control over the brainwaves known as alpha
rhythms,
which leads to better focus and may help ease pain. In addition to calming
the mind and body, meditation can also reduce the markers of stress in people with anxiety disorders. Rigorous
studies have backed health claims such as these to convince therapists,
physicians, and corporate gurus to embrace meditation’s potential.
What contemporary and ancient meditators have
always known, however, is that while the hype may be warranted, the practice is
not all peace, love, and blissful glimpses of unreality. Sitting zazen, gazing at their third eye, a
person can encounter extremely unpleasant emotions and physical or mental
disturbances.
Zen Buddhism has a word for the warped
perceptions that can arise during meditation: makyo, which combines the Japanese words for
“devil” and “objective world.” Philip Kapleau, the late American Zen master, once described confronting makyo as
“a dredging and cleansing process that releases stressful experiences in deep
layers of the mind.”
However, this demanding and sometimes
intensely distressing side of meditation is rarely mentioned in scientific
literature, says Jared Lindahl, a visiting professor of religious studies at
Brown University, who has an interest in neuroscience and Buddhism. Along
with Willoughby Britton, a psychologist and assistant professor of psychiatry at
Brown, the two meditators have co-authored a study that documents and
creates a taxonomy for the variant phenomenology of meditation. The
paper, published in Plos One, is the beginning of an ongoing series of studies. “Just
because something is positive and beneficial doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be aware
of the broader range of possible effects it might have,” Lindahl says.
To conduct their research, the pair interviewed 60
Western Buddhist meditation practitioners who had all experienced
challenging issues during their practice. They included both rookies and
meditation teachers, many of whom had accumulated more than 10,000 hours
of meditation experience in their lifetime. All belonged to either Theravāda,
Zen, or Tibetan traditions.
The researchers identified 59 kinds of
unexpected or unwanted experiences, which they classified into seven domains:
cognitive, perceptual, affective (related to moods), somatic, conative (related
to motivation), sense of self, and social. Among the experiences described to
them were feelings of anxiety and fear, involuntary twitching, insomnia, a
sense of complete detachment from one’s emotions, hypersensitivity to light or
sound, distortion in time and space, nausea, hallucinations, irritability, and
the re-experiencing of past traumas. The associated levels of distress and
impairment ranged from “mild and transient to severe and lasting,” according to
the study. Most would not imagine that these side-effects could be
hiding behind the lotus-print curtains of your local meditation center.
However, the survey respondents didn’t
necessarily perceive every non-euphoric event as negative. In fact, says
Britton, she and Lindahl deliberately avoided the word “adverse” in their study
for this reason. Instead, they chose “challenging,” which better captured the
meditators’ varied interpretations of their experiences. For instance, a person
who came away from a retreat feeling “very expanded and very unified with other
people in the world” might have found their oneness with the universe
distracting once they returned home. (That’s challenging, not tragic.)
The goal of the study was to look for patterns
in the common accounts of unwanted reactions. Who runs into the unexpected
hurdles? What are the unique set of factors involved? In which ways do teachers
assist students who are struggling? (And do they blame inner demons for the
upsets, or maybe something you ate at lunch?) The answers, which still require
future research, may one day be relevant to the ways meditation is used as
therapy.
The calm
before the panic attack.
We’ve all heard about the benefits of meditation ad
nauseam. Those disciplined enough to practice regularly are rewarded with increased
control over the brainwaves known as alpha
rhythms, which leads to better
focus and may help ease pain. In addition to calming the mind and body,
meditation can also reduce the markers of stress in people with anxiety disorders. Rigorous studies have
backed health claims such as these to convince therapists, physicians, and
corporate gurus to embrace meditation’s potential.
What contemporary and ancient meditators have always known,
however, is that while the hype may be warranted, the practice is not all
peace, love, and blissful glimpses of unreality. Sitting zazen,
gazing at their third eye, a person can encounter extremely unpleasant emotions
and physical or mental disturbances.
Zen Buddhism has a word for the warped perceptions that can
arise during meditation: makyo, which combines the
Japanese words for “devil” and “objective world.” Philip Kapleau, the
late American Zen master,
once described confronting makyo as
“a dredging and cleansing process that releases stressful experiences in deep
layers of the mind.”
However, this demanding and sometimes intensely distressing
side of meditation is rarely mentioned in scientific literature, says Jared
Lindahl, a visiting professor of religious studies at Brown University, who has
an interest in neuroscience and Buddhism. Along with Willoughby Britton, a
psychologist and assistant professor of psychiatry at Brown, the two meditators
have co-authored a study that documents and creates a taxonomy for the
variant phenomenology of meditation. The paper, published in Plos One, is
the beginning of an ongoing series of studies. “Just because something is
positive and beneficial doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be aware of the broader range
of possible effects it might have,” Lindahl says.
To conduct their research, the pair interviewed 60
Western Buddhist meditation practitioners who had all experienced
challenging issues during their practice. They included both rookies and
meditation teachers, many of whom had accumulated more than 10,000 hours
of meditation experience in their lifetime. All belonged to either Theravāda,
Zen, or Tibetan traditions.
The researchers identified 59 kinds of unexpected or
unwanted experiences, which they classified into seven domains: cognitive,
perceptual, affective (related to moods), somatic, conative (related to
motivation), sense of self, and social. Among the experiences described to them
were feelings of anxiety and fear, involuntary twitching, insomnia, a sense of
complete detachment from one’s emotions, hypersensitivity to light or sound,
distortion in time and space, nausea, hallucinations, irritability, and the
re-experiencing of past traumas. The associated levels of distress and impairment
ranged from “mild and transient to severe and lasting,” according to the study.
Most would not imagine that these side-effects could be hiding behind
the lotus-print curtains of your local meditation center.
However, the survey respondents didn’t necessarily perceive
every non-euphoric event as negative. In fact, says Britton, she and Lindahl
deliberately avoided the word “adverse” in their study for this reason.
Instead, they chose “challenging,” which better captured the meditators’ varied
interpretations of their experiences. For instance, a person who came away from
a retreat feeling “very expanded and very unified with other people in the
world” might have found their oneness with the universe distracting once
they returned home. (That’s challenging, not tragic.)
The goal of the study was to look for patterns in the common
accounts of unwanted reactions. Who runs into the unexpected hurdles? What are
the unique set of factors involved? In which ways do teachers assist students
who are struggling? (And do they blame inner demons for the upsets, or maybe
something you ate at lunch?) The answers, which still require future research,
may one day be relevant to the ways meditation is used as therapy.
